A man who graduated high school in Santa Fe before enlisting in the Army will receive the Medal of Honor from President Barack Obama. Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Arthur Petry will be the second living active-duty service member to receive the Medal of Honor for actions in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Petry lost his right hand while throwing a live grenade away from his fellow soldiers during a raid in Afghanistan’s Paktia province.

The Army News Service described his actions in more detail. A grenade landed about ten yards from soldiers, injuring them. Then another grenade landed just feet from the soldiers again.

Recognizing the threat that the enemy grenade posed to his fellow Rangers, Petry — despite his own wounds and with complete disregard for his personal safety — consciously and deliberately risked his life to move to and secure the live enemy grenade and throw it away from his fellow Rangers, according to battlefield reports.

As Petry released the grenade in the direction of the enemy, preventing the serious injury or death of Higgins and Robinson, it detonated and amputated his right hand.

Petry assessed his wound and placed a tourniquet on his right arm. He then reported that he was still in contact with the enemy and that he had been wounded again.

Petry is currently assigned to the 75th Ranger Regiment and attached to the Special Operations Command. According to the White House, Petry has served multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq totaling 28 months of deployment.

The White House announced the decision on Tuesday, and Petry will receive the award on July 12.

The Santa Fe New Mexican outlined his Santa Fe connections:

Petry was interviewed by The New Mexican in 1998 when he was an 18-year-old graduating senior at St. Catherine Indian School — the institution’s final graduating class.

Petry told a reporter he was failing all of his classes at Santa Fe High School and almost flunked out before his parents transferred him to St. Catherine. “It helps because you have a lot of support,” he said. “I could have graduated last summer, but I came back this year because I like this school.”

Also that year, he was given The Bootstrap/SER Award honoring area high school seniors who have committed to improving themselves and the community.

This is not the first honor that Petry has received. The White House said in a release that Petry’s military decorations include:

[T]wo Bronze Stars, a Purple Heart, three Army Commendation Medals, two Army Achievement Medals, National Defense Service Medal, three Army Good Conduct Medals, Afghanistan Campaign Medal with Combat Star, Iraq Campaign Medal with Combat Star, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, to name a few.

The Medal of Honor is awarded to member of the United States Armed Forces who “distinguish themselves conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidty above and beyond the call of duty” while during active combat.

Rep. Martin Heinrich sent a letter to President Barack Obama Thursday asking him to being a troop withdrawal in July of this year. “We have a responsibility to leave Afghanistan in a responsible way,” Heinrich wrote, “and I believe it is time to begin this progress.”

Heinrich called on Obama to “follow through on the pledge we made to the American people to begin the drawdown of U.S. forces from Afghanistan this summer.”

There are currently 100,000 American troops stationed in Afghanistan.

Heinrich cited the cost and length of the war in Afghanistan in his letter:

We have spent over $450 billion in Afghanistan since the start of this war. Our youngest soldiers were just eight years old when our nation was attacked on September 11, 2001. It is time we start bringing our troops home.

He also mentioned that he visited Kandahar City in May of 2010 and saw “firsthand that progress is being made.”

Obama said earlier this month that the drawdown this summer “will be significant” and “is not not just a token gesture.”

He said he would have to speak with Gen. David Petraeus before discussing any specific numbers.

Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Obama administration had not yet decided how many troops will come home in July.

Letter to President Obama re Afghanistan 04 25 2011

U.S. Rep. Harry Teague, D-N.M. (Photo by Heath Haussamen)

WASHINGTON, D.C.–After conducting his own investigation into medical care at one of America’s largest Army bases, Rep. Harry Teague promised to dramatically expand an inquiry into the treatment of soldiers who have suffered mild traumatic brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a letter to medical commanders at Fort Bliss, the third-largest Army base in the country, Teague, D-N.M., wrote that he had turned up troubling evidence of systemic problems across the military in the treatment of soldiers suffering lingering cognitive difficulties as a result of roadside blasts.

Teague launched his inquiry after an investigation in June by NPR and ProPublica found that the military’s medical system had failed to diagnose and treat tens of thousands of soldiers that had suffered mild traumatic brain injuries, often called one of the wars’ signature injuries. The reports also found that soldiers had to fight for treatment at the military hospital at Fort Bliss, a base in El Paso, Texas that sprawls into Teague’s district.

Teague said he planned to ask the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm, to conduct a “comprehensive examination” of the care provided to soldiers with traumatic brain injuries in the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs’ medical systems.

“I am concerned that Fort Bliss, and by extension the military, is not adequately identifying, assessing, and treating patients with mild to moderate TBI case,” Teague wrote.

A spokeswoman for the Pentagon said today that they were reviewing the letter. A Fort Bliss hospital spokesman said base commanders have not yet had time to respond to Teague’s concerns.

The hospital’s former commander had promised a “thorough review” of the care and treatment of soldiers after the NPR and ProPublica stories. A Fort Bliss spokesman said Friday he does not know if the review has been conducted.

Official military figures show that about 115,000 troops have suffered mild traumatic brain injuries since 2002. But based on interviews and unpublished military studies, we found evidence suggesting that tens of thousands go undiagnosed or sustain injuries that are never documented. Mild traumatic brain injuries, also known as concussions, are often referred to as invisible wounds because they are difficult to detect and leave no visible scars.

While most soldiers with concussions recover, civilian studies indicate that between 5 percent and 15 percent of people who suffer mild traumatic brain injuries have lingering cognitive problems. Unpublished studies of soldiers echo those findings. Such soldiers have trouble remembering, following directions or doing more than one task at a time.

Teague said that he had several concerns about the state of care at Fort Bliss. He said his investigators found that the Fort Bliss program had not been accredited by the Commission on the Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities, a leading trade organization.

He also said he was concerned that Fort Bliss did not have enough staff to treat the more than 1,100 soldiers who were diagnosed on base last year as suffering continuing problems from mild traumatic brain injuries. All in all, Teague wrote, soldiers with mild traumatic brain injuries were not receiving a high level of medical care.

He said that Fort Bliss and the military medical system needed to develop a comprehensive system of rehabilitation to help soldiers with continuing problems as a result of sustaining concussions.

“Our response to the epidemic of TBI among our service members and veterans should be overwhelming and unambiguous,” he wrote. “The U.S. government should marshal every resource to treat and heal the invisible wounds of our current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

This story is the result of a collaboration between ProPublica and NPR.

Heinrich was one of six Congressmen, from both political parties, to travel to Afghanistan. Heinrich traveled along with Representatives Larry Kissell, D-N.C., Frank Kratovil, Md., John Kline, R-Minn., Duncan Hunter, R-Cali., and David Reichert, R-Wash.

The six traveled to meet with troops and discuss issues pertaining to the war, including training and equipping of U.S. forces, reconstruction efforts, combating corruption, and training the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police.

Heinrich’s office promised to release “a comprehensive recap” of his trip, along with official photos and videos later this week.

“I take him at his word, I don’t know what occurred at the meeting,” Udall said, referring to a meeting of the Afghan parliament where Karzai reportedly made the remarks.

Udall said he and other members of Congress spoke to Karzai for an hour. Udall also said he suggested that Karzai give an in-depth interview with an American journalist to help with his image in the United States.

Tthe delegation also met with General Stanley McChrystal, the Commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, and Ambassador to Afghanistan Ken Eikenberg.

First-hand knowledge of Afghanistan is “invaluable,” Udall said Friday, adding that a “key part of being a legislator” is oversight, and first-hand knowledge of the area will help him in that accountability process.

Udall said he is still skeptical about the increase in troops to Afghanistan, but that for security reasons he would not speak about specific policy points on the call.

He also said that he sometimes was debriefed by President George W. Bush after such trips, but that he did not know if Obama would do that as well.

Udall said one of his impressions of Afghanistan was that it was a “terribly, terribly poor country” that was a largely agriculture-based economy.

“You get the sense that they have a lot of water but they could use a lot more infrastructure to use the water better,” Udall said.

Udall also said that the people in the country were “very friendly in areas” but that there were many other areas the group could not access because of security. He described heavy security for the group every time they left the base.

Udall said that they did not get a chance to talk to many average Afghan citizens, but those that they did were in the agricultural regions of country.

“In that community, they were pretty happy with the situation because the American and coalition forces have brought peace to the area,” Udall said. That allowed the farmers in the area to grow their crops.

While the most notorious, and lucrative, crop in Afghanistan is poppy, Udall would only say that he was briefed on the problem, but could not speak on it further. Poppy is made into heroin and it is estimated that 90 percent of the world’s heroin comes from Afghanistan.

Udall also said he brought the troops some decidedly less-controversial gifts; piñon-flavored coffee and red and green chile jerky.

The other Congressional members of the delegation were Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev., Scott Brown, R-Mass., and Tom Carper, D-Del. as well as Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va.

Udall is expected to return to New Mexico on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Colorado is in the throes of a major battle — anglers vs. river rafters — over who has access to the state’s waterways. The Wall Street Journal does a humorous breakout story on the battle, telling us the spat has produced legislation, and helps put the battle in context for non-Westerners by quoting Mark Twain: “Out West whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.”

Here’s an update on the controversy that erupted in Virginia this week after the governor there declared April to be Confederate History Month but forgot to mention the state’s complicated history with slavery in his proclamation. Gov. Robert McDonnell has revised the proclamation to include references to the evil of racism and apologized to anyone who was offended, reports the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, half of American families won’t pay federal 2009 income taxes this year thanks to recent tax code changes and the financial hit many have taken because of the bad economy, according to the Associated Press.

Moving to the international front, the opposition appears to have overthrown the autocratic ruler in Kyrgyzstan and complicated a strained relationship with the U.S., which uses a base within the country to supply its war in Afghanistan, reports the New York Times.

And The Economist updates us on life in the Gaza, which is still controlled by Hamas despite efforts by the U.S. to wrest that authority from the group and give it to the Palestinian Authority.

Blackwater guards in Iraq in 2003 (ALI HAIDER/EPA/KEYSTONE Press)

By March 24, the private security corporation formerly known as Blackwater — last seen in Afghanistan shooting civilians and stealing weapons intended for the Afghan police — may win a new Defense Department contract to train the Afghan police. And nearly no one in the government wants to own up to how it could happen.

Interviews over the past week with numerous Pentagon officials and military officers in Washington and Kabul have presented a portrait of a contracting process in which it is remarkably difficult to deny a contract to a security company involved in numerous civilian deaths and possible fraud. Although it is not certain that Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, will receive a contract that could be worth as much as a billion dollars, the fact that the company is still eligible for the bid — while no one involved in the process wishes to claim responsibility for the potential award — highlights a confusing, unaccountable and systemic problem in how the government delivers security contracts.

Last year, at the request of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commanding general of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the Defense Department took control of a contract for training Afghan policemen from the State Department’s Bureau of Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs — an office that the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction signaled out as exercising weak oversight. According to four senior military officers with the NATO military command responsible for training Afghan security forces, known as CSTC-A, the command “identified a requirement” for a contractor to perform “tasks we specified” for training the police, said Brig. Gen. Gary Patton, the director of programs for CSTC-A. But all four officers said they had no further involvement with how the contract will be awarded.

That decision belongs to an obscure Army office called CNTPO. Short for the Counter-Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office, CNTPO is a subdivision of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command. No one interviewed for this article could explain why CNTPO is responsible for overseeing a contract that has a tenuous connection to counter-narcoterrorism. Patton explained that CSTC-A’s advice to CNTPO on the contract is limited to designing the shape of the contract’s requirements, including what he described as a focus on “training the trainer” of Afghan forces and “more counterinsurgency in the program instruction, more counterinsurgency lessons, operating conditions and the like brought into the program instruction.” CNTPO had prior relationships with five security companies that it allowed to bid on the Afghan police training contract: Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, NG, ARINC — and Blackwater.

It doesn’t appear like CNTPO is a particularly well-known organization inside the Pentagon. Several of Patton’s colleagues at CSTC-A described it as being based in Huntsville, Ala., but several attempts to contact the office over the past week were unsuccessful.

In mid-December, DynCorp, another private security contractor that held the police-training contract back when the State Department controlled it, filed an objectionwith the Government Accountability Office over the decision to move the acquisition authority for the contract to CNTPO from State. The GAO has until March 24 to adjudicate the dispute. Several sources throughout the Pentagon and Congress expect CNTPO to award the contract almost immediately afterward if GAO rules that the office is indeed allowed to award it. CSTC-A officers said they did not know which company CNTPO believes ought to hold the contract.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) has expressed frustration that Blackwater is eligible for another government contract. In late February, an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee, which Levin chairs, uncovered that Blackwater created a shell company called Paravant in 2008 to help it win a sub-contract with the Army for training Afghan soldiers. While holding that contract, employees of Paravant who were never authorized to carry weapons simply took hundreds of rifles and pistols intended for Afghan police use from a U.S. military weapons depot near Kabul, even signing for those guns using the name of a “South Park” cartoon character.

Levin wrote to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Feb. 25 to request that Pentagon officials “consider the deficiencies in Blackwater’s performance under the weapons training contract before a decision is made to award the police training work to Blackwater.” In a separate letter, Levin requested Attorney General Eric Holder investigate Blackwater for contract fraud. Justice Department officials would not comment for the record, but told TWI that Holder is considering Levin’s request.

Any action from Holder would represent perhaps the only chance to stop Blackwater from receiving any additional government contracts. Several CSTC-A officers and Pentagon officials said that good-government contract rules prevent them from banning Blackwater. Specifically, an obscure contracting rule known as Federal Acquisition Regulation 9.406-2 prevents an acquisition official for banning a company from being awarded a contract unless the company has been formally “debarred” from eligibility — something that has never happened in Blackwater’s case. However, several criteria for debarment appear to apply to Blackwater, including “commission of fraud,” “theft,” “falsification or destruction of records, making false statements,” “a history of failure to perform, or of unsatisfactory performance of, one or more contracts,” and “violations of the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988.”

Asked what message it would send to the Afghans if a company whose employees have shot Afghan civilians and stolen weapons meant for the Afghan police wins a contract to train Afghan policeman, Patton said we was “not going to address hypotheticals.” He added, “I’ve got faith in the system, and we’re going to let the system play out and go from there.”

Photo by Keary O.

Employees of the CIA-connected private security corporation Blackwater diverted hundreds of weapons, including more than 500 AK-47 assault rifles, from a U.S. weapons bunker in Afghanistan intended to equip Afghan policemen, according to an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee. On at least one occasion, an individual claiming to work for the company evidently signed for a weapons shipment using the name of a “South Park” cartoon character. And Blackwater has yet to return hundreds of the guns to the military.

A Blackwater subsidiary known as Paravant that until recently operated in Afghanistan acquired the weapons for its employees’ “personal use,” according to committee staffers, as did other non-Paravant employees of Blackwater. Yet contractors in Afghanistan are not permitted to operate weapons without explicit permission from U.S. Central Command, something Blackwater never obtained. A November 2008 email from a Paravant vice president named Brian McCracken, obtained by the committee, nevertheless reads: “We have not received formal permission from the Army to carry weapons yet but I will take my chances.”

As a result of Blackwater’s disregard for U.S. military restrictions on contractor firearms, four employees of Paravant — which held a subcontract from defense giant Raytheon to train Afghan soldiers — under the influence of alcohol opened fire on a car carrying four Afghan civilians on May 5, 2009, wounding two. That incident, occurring less than two years after Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, prompted the committee’s investigation.

“In the fight against the Taliban, the perception that the Afghans have of us is critical,” Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the committee, told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “It’s clear to me that if we’re going to win that struggle, we need to know that contractor personnel are adequately screened, they’re adequately supervised and they’re adequately held accountable.” Levin will hold a hearing on Blackwater’s Afghanistan contracts Wednesday morning.

The committee’s investigation points to the contrary. Blackwater personnel appear to have gone to exceptional lengths to obtain weapons from U.S. military weapons storehouses intended for use by the Afghan police. According to the committee, at the behest of the company’s Afghanistan country manager, Ricky Chambers, Blackwater on at least two occasions acquired hundreds of rifles and pistols from a U.S. military facility near Kabul called 22 Bunkers by the military and Pol-e Charki by the Afghans. Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of all U.S. military forces in the Middle East and South Asia, wrote to the committee to explain that “there is no current or past written policy, order, directive, or instruction that allows U.S. Military contractors or subcontractors in Afghanistan to use weapons stored at 22 Bunkers.”

On one of those occasions, in September 2008, Chief Warrant Officer Greg Sailer, who worked at 22 Bunkers and is a friend of a Blackwater officer working in Afghanistan, signed over more than 200 AK-47s to an individual identified as “Eric Cartman” or possibly “Carjman” from Blackwater’s Counter Narcotics Training Unit. A Blackwater lawyer told committee staff that no one by those names has ever been employed by the company. Eric Cartman is the name of an obnoxious character from Comedy Central’s popular “South Park” cartoon.

Blackwater personnel invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination when approached by the committee to explain the weapons acquisitions from 22 Bunkers, according to committee staff. Sailer, who is still deployed to Afghanistan, told the committee that he thought Blackwater was signing for the weapons to train Afghan police, a task it has never conducted.

Not all of the guns received from Blackwater have been returned to the Afghan government — and, according to committee staff, many only began to be returned after staff approached the company for an explanation. “It was represented to us that all the weapons had been returned” to 22 Bunkers, Levin said. “That is not true. Hundreds of them were not returned.” Asked if that meant Blackwater lied to Congress, Levin replied, “They misrepresented the facts, and I’d like to leave it at that.”

Raytheon did not renew Paravant’s contract for training the Afghan army, which expired in September. Blackwater still holds a contract with the State Department worth millions of dollars to protect diplomats in Afghanistan. While that contract expires this year, Politico reported on Tuesday that Blackwater, now renamed Xe Services, might acquire a new multimillion-dollar contract from the Defense Department to train Afghan police — the same police force that Blackwater’s weapons diversions from 22 Bunkers deprived of hundreds of pistols and rifles.

This is not the first time Blackwater has faced allegations of diverted weapons. In 2007, company employees came under federal investigation for improperly shipping hundreds of weapons to Iraq, some of which are believed to have been sold on the black market and acquired by a Kurdish terrorist group. A Blackwater statement at the time said allegations that the company was “in any way associated or complicit in unlawful arms activities are baseless.” The New York Times reported in November that the company is negotiating with regulators over “hundreds of millions of dollars in fines” associated with the illicit weapons shipments.

In January, Blackwater’s founder, Erik Prince, confirmed to Vanity Fair that his 12-year-old company — which has earned more than a billion dollars through government contracts in the past decade — was involved in a nascent terrorist assassination program run by the CIA, among other CIA activities. “I’m paying for all sorts of intelligence activities to support American national security, out of my own pocket,” Prince told the magazine. Additionally, The Nation recently reported that Blackwater assists the Joint Special Operations Command with the terrorist manhunt in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including with the operations of JSOC’s armed unmanned drones.

Levin said his inquiry had uncovered “inadequate oversight by the Army over this contract.” The Florida-based Army office supposedly overseeing the contract did not even have a contracting officer representative in Afghanistan when the Paravant employees shot at Afghan civilians on May 5, 2009. Yet as early as December 2008, concerned Raytheon personnel informed that Army office that Paravant personnel were carrying unapproved weapons. An officer in Afghanistan responsible for training Afghan soldiers told the committee, “We should have had better control.”

Additionally, Blackwater personnel in Afghanistan, including those involved in both the May shooting and an earlier improper weapons discharge from December 2008, have been cited for, among other infractions, drug and alcohol abuse and, in one case, an “extensive criminal history.”

Wednesday’s hearing is expected to receive testimony from current and former Blackwater/Paravant officers, including Brian C. McCracken, the former Paravant vice president who now serves as Raytheon’s chief Afghanistan program officer; Fred Roitz, a Blackwater vice president; and John Walker, a former Paravant program officer.

Of 1,249 patients enrolled in the state medical marijuana program as of mid February, 291 have a diagnosis of PTSD. The next two largest groups are cancer patients, at 198, and HIV/AIDS patients, at 130.

PTSD is an anxiety disorder, sometimes severe, that is experienced by people who’ve endured dangerous situations, such as military combat. A Rand Corporation study in 2008 concluded that 20 percent of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD or major depression.

At the same time, fewer than 10 percent of veterans with PTSD complete treatment programs for the disorder. Suicide among veterans has skyrocketed, and more vets have committed suicide since 2001 than have died on the battlefield in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Drug Enforcement Agency advises VA on policy

The VA policy that prohibits its doctors from recommending medical marijuana derives from the advice of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, according to a policy statement given to The Independent by Sonja Brown, Chief of the Voluntary Service & Public Affairs Operations of the New Mexico VA Health Care System. This advice reflects the continued federal classification of marijuana as an illegal drug, despite the fact that  14 states now allow its use for medicinal purposes.

The VA policy does allow it’s physicians to tell patients that they are free to seek a recommendation from doctors outside the VA system,  and also encourages physicians to inform patients about treatments other than marijuana.

Paul Culkin and his wife, Victoria, at the Roundhouse to speak about the benefits of medical marijuana to PTSD patients. Photo by Marjorie Childress

That the largest group enrolled in the state program is composed of PTSD patients reflects the large number of veterans returning from the wars who need help, Army veteran Paul Culkin told The Independent. Culkin uses medical marijuana to help deal with the PTSD he returned home with after serving as a Staff Sergeant on the Army bomb squad in Iraq.

Both Culkin and another patient The Independent interviewed in January, Mr. Garcia, described  their VA treatment for PTSD as involving numerous different prescription drugs that induced a zombie-like state. Marijuana, they both told The Independent, has enabled them to reduce the amount of prescription drugs they take and lead more normal lives.

“The medications were turning me into a zombie, I couldn’t relate to my daughter,” Culkin told a group assembled at New Mexico’s state capitol last week. “Medical cannabis made me a father and a husband again.”

Research supports the anecdotal evidence that marijuana helps PTSD sufferers to find relief. A 2007 study of marijuana use by PTSD patients, reported in the Journal of Traumatic Stress, found that the severity of PTSD symptoms correlated with the use of marijuana as a coping method, with that being the only motive for using the drug.

Vets self-medicate with alcohol and often abuse prescription drugs

But, Culkin said, the VA hospital policy makes it difficult to use the drug, because it doesn’t acknowledge it’s benefits and penalizes veterans who use it outside of the state program while not helping veterans access the state program.

“A lot [of veterans] are self-medicating, especially with alcohol, or are given prescription drugs while still on active duty and they come out addicted,” he said. “When they get out, they go into the VA rehabilitation program but if they test hot for cannabis [they have a problem].”

Culkin heads up the New Mexico Medical Marijuana Patient’s Group, along with Garcia. A key objective they both mention is to expand access to medical marijuana, including through the VA system.

While the VA doesn’t help patients acquire a state license, it does accommodate them in its rehabilitation programs once they have an approved state-license, said Brown.

“As long as the vet has a legitimate license from [the] State they would not be viewed as having a relapse,” Brown wrote in an email to The Independent. “The legitimate license ensures the VA that they are enrolled in the state program so a positive test is very likely.”

The Independent asked if this is official policy, like the prohibition on VA doctors making medical marijuana recommendations, but has yet to receive a reply.

Here is the official VA policy regarding making medical marijuana recommendations, provided to The Independent by Brown:

How should VA physicians respond to patient requests to fill out state forms authorizing medical marijuana?

Source of information:   In March of 2008, the General Counsel provided the Under Secretary for Health with a legal opinion regarding “State Medical Marijuana Registration Forms” documented in VA memorandum VAOPCGADV9-2008. This memorandum addresses the legal issues involved in a VA physician responding to patient requests to complete forms that might allow a patient to participate in a state medical marijuana program.  The memorandum also discusses the possibility of criminal or other penalties resulting from VA physicians resulting competing such forms.

Answer: General Counsel has held that: “VA should not authorize completion of forms seeking recommendation or opinions regarding” participation in medical marijuana programs and that “applicable statutes and regulations do not require VA physicians to complete such forms.”

Further “A VA physicians’ completion of a form that would permit a patient to participate in a state medical marijuana program could result in DEA action to seek actual or threatened revocation of the physician’s registration to prescribe controlled substances as well as criminal charges.”

The language in the New Mexico form requires physician certification that “the potential health benefits of the medical use of marijuana would likely outweigh health risks for the patient.”  Informal advice received from the DEA suggests that the Department of Justice may seek civil or criminal penalties for Federal physicians and other practitioners who complete forms that either recommends the use of medical marijuana or forms that describe the patient’s physical condition in order to facilitate the patient’s entry into a state medical marijuana program.

When patient’s request that physician’s complete state forms for medical marijuana programs it is import to educate the patient that Federal law supersedes that of the state and that as Federal employees, VA physicians are not permitted to complete the forms.

What can VA physicians appropriately do to assist the patient requesting medical marijuana?

VA physicians can inform veterans that they may seek the assistance of a community physician to complete the forms and that patients have the right to sign a release to provide their medical information to providers outside the VA system. In addition, VA physicians are encouraged to discuss with their patients other possible treatment options for the medical disorders and clinical symptoms for which they are seeking medical marijuana.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the war in Afghanistan on Dec. 2. (Oscar Matatquin/ZUMA Press)

It sounded like a throwaway line in President Obama’s West Point address about the Afghanistan war. “It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak,” the president said, tying his troop increase in Afghanistan to direct threats to U.S. national security. “In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror.”

That was all Obama said about the relationship between al-Qaeda’s senior leadership in the Pakistani tribal areas and potential domestic terror attacks. But at a Congressional hearing shortly afterward, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton cited those same recent arrests in the United States to argue for the wisdom of the administration’s strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The extremist “syndicate” headed by al-Qaeda and located in the Waziristan region of Pakistan has an “unmatched” capability to export terrorist activities to “Yemen, Somalia, or, indeed, Denver.” That was a reference to Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year old Afghan-American whom authorities charged in September for conspiring with members of al-Qaeda to pull off a terrorist attack.

Zazi’s case is part of a recent and rapid upswing of announced arrests of American Muslims suspected of involvement with extremism, including in Chicago and Minneapolis, where young Muslims have been accused of aiding anti-Indian terror groups and al-Qaeda-linked Somali militants. Dramatically, last week, Pakistani authorities arrested five young Virginians whom they claim were seeking to liaise with al-Qaeda in the tribal areas. Those arrests prompted stories this weekend in The Washington Post and The New York Times asking whether American Muslims’ resistance to extremismhas frayed in recent years.

But current and former counterterrorism officials and al-Qaeda experts warn that while the Pakistani tribal areas represent the center of international Islamic terrorist extremism, its connections to recent domestic terror threats are more ambiguous than the administration has recently portrayed. And they add that the recent arrests indicate a silver lining: intelligence and law enforcement are increasingly equipped to intercept domestic terror threats, particularly if they have some tie to al-Qaeda in Pakistan, raising questions about how potent a threat al-Qaeda remains.

Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials who have testified before Congress this year, is under significant threat in the Pakistani tribal areas. Pakistan’s Army has reinvaded those areas and forcibly confronted its allies in the Pakistani Taliban, constricting al-Qaeda’s freedom of action. The CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command have harassed al-Qaeda and its allies for the past two years, primarily through missiles fired from unmanned aerial vehicles. Most recently, a strike Tuesday may have killed al-Qaeda’s chief liaison to its affiliate in Yemen.

If so, the targeting will have highlighted a revealing fact about al-Qaeda eight years after 9/11: boxed into the tribal areas, the organization seeks less to pull off major terrorist attacks than to inspire and in some cases fund them. It has inspired a multiplicity of extremist websites, allowing people worldwide — including in the U.S. — access to its propaganda. And it also seeks to establish a presence in Muslim countries like Yemen and Somalia, often by offering financial or training support to existing extremist groups outside Pakistan. While those two approaches offer al-Qaeda a continued lease on life, analysts say they also dilute al-Qaeda’s brand and raise questions about the actual degree of danger it still poses.

“The tendency to lump all threats in to one big bin” ultimately “hurts the policy and strategy decision process,” said one U.S. counterterrorism official who requested anonymity because he was not cleared to talk to the media. Instead, “We need to better understand the motivation, goals, and links — where they exist– of the disparate groups from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to [the Somali group] al-Shabab and criminal networks in [the Horn of Africa] to Pakistani opposition/terrorist groups and to the various Taliban in Afghanistan.”

Indeed, Marc Sageman, a former CIA official and terrorism researcher affiliated with several universities and think tanks, testified in October to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the number of successful al-Qaeda attacks in the past 15 years was significantly smaller than the number of successful attacks carried out by al-Qaeda-affiliated or al-Qaeda-inspired organizations. Furthermore, only 22 percent of attacks by terrorist groups with worldviews similar to al-Qaeda’s over the past five years actually tied back to al-Qaeda itself, according to Sageman’s research. In an interview, Sageman said that Clinton’s testimony “an oversimplification to the point that the truth is unrecognizable.”

The Obama administration is mischaracterizing the terrorist threat to get the public to back escalating the Afghanistan war, Sageman said. “Secretary Clinton’s distortions are typical of a politician,” he said, “who distorts reality to muster support for a policy.”

But al-Qaeda’s message is finding at least some appeal, however marginal, among American Muslims in their teens and 20s, more than it did to their older brothers, cousins or fathers. “Those people were 10 years old when 9/11 happened” and have since “felt like they grew up under a cloud of suspicion because of their religion.” said a former counterterrorism official who declined to speak for the record. Those individuals — whom the ex-official clarified were “a few bad apples” among millions of law-abiding American Muslims — “saw issues like torture, Guantanamo, and Iraq and decided to react because they lacked an understanding of history, and view things instead from a conspiratorial view and are open to being radicalized.” By contrast, the older generation — the families of the five Virginians — were encouraged to go to the FBI with their worries about their children’s travel to Pakistan after the prompting of a major American Muslim lobby group, the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Like in the United Kingdom, the ex-official said, where in 2005 homegrown radicals like Mohammed Sidique Khan perpetrated the July 7 London bombings with direct aid from al-Qaeda, the recent American Muslim arrests show some youths “felt discriminated against and tried to find their roots somewhere else, and they went back to the Pashtun tribes.”

But their ability to pull off terrorist attacks after making contact with al-Qaeda may not be as great as the administration as the Obama administration portrayed. Of all the recent arrests, only one, a Chicagoan named David Coleman Headley, had any involvement in a successful attack, the mass killings in Mumbai last November, an attack not believed to be connected to al-Qaeda. Neither did the only successful case of post-9/11 violence by a radicalized American Muslim: the shootings at Ft. Hood last month by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. In the other cases, from Zazi to the Virginians arrested in Pakistan, intelligence and law enforcement were able to monitor and then arrest suspicious individuals before any attacks occurred.

“Zazi is interesting in this respect,” said Leah Farrall, a former senior al-Qaeda analyst with the Australian Federal Police. Farrall said she would watch Zazi’s forthcoming trial for clues to how al-Qaeda actually reaches out to Muslims in America. “Did he meet an Afghan gatekeeper or an al-Qaeda linked gate keeper? Whatever the case, he either met them in the U.S. or online. These things are crucial to understanding the threat posed.”

All that points to a poor prognosis for al-Qaeda, even if younger American Muslims are somewhat more prone to radicalization, according to the former counterterrorism official.

“Al-Qaeda’s are capabilities basically almost nothing these days,” the ex-official said. “Sure, they’ve got a couple good operatives, and maybe will try to pull something big to make themselves relevant again … If we make them appear relevant — they’re at war with the greatest country on earth — then guess what? They’re gonna be big.” Instead, the ex-official continued, “if we treat them as insignificant, small, pathetic men with nothing to do with Islam, they’ll lose their relevance.”